You completely miss the point. Mining is what miners do to prove(albeit usually without their awareness) to the Bitcoin investors/users their commitment to maintain and secure the payment network, the bitcoins you mined is the proof itself, every payment network requires substantial infrastructure investment, you can't build a Paypal/WU replacement with no solid hardware.
  Bitcoin miner capable of handling the entire Bitcoin network workload "maintain and secure"=protection against sabotage=beat any malicious third-party to it. |
|
|
|
It's pointless busywork designed to scale according to how many other people are doing the same pointless busywork.
Mining gold is pointless busywork; we already have all we'll ever likely need for industrial production, but people continue to do it because it has value. I consider most of what goes on in Washington, D.C. to be pointless busywork. The difference of course is that we don't purposely pour rocks and dirt over top the gold, put on a blindfold while digging and spin around 3 times in a circle to make it more difficult to retrieve and thus claim it's more valuable, we simply dig when we believe there is gold to be found. We understand that if you agree with bitcoin in it's entirety and have drank the coolaid, that "mining" coins is necessary and thus acceptable. Bitcoin's code however is not a law of nature but a constructed set of rules that can be changed with consensus, leaving absolutely no excuse not to find more intelligent and less wasteful replacements for proof-of-work concepts later on. I admit it; Cultist defenders of energy waste are a sort of pet peve of mine. You completely miss the point. Mining is what miners do to prove(albeit usually without their awareness) to the Bitcoin investors/users their commitment to maintain and secure the payment network, the bitcoins you mined is the proof itself, every payment network requires substantial infrastructure investment, you can't build a Paypal/WU competitor with no solid hardware. |
|
|
|
The problem is not Gavin or someone else stopping working on Bitcoin software. The problem is what to do if devs are secretly forced by government to include some kind of timebomb in software and when majority upgrades then kaboom! and network is broken and the user trust with it.
That would be sad. Because nobody ever builds from source or even looks at the source. Ever. That just doesn't happen. How many of have audited version 0.8.2 and not only for obvious misbehaving but probably intentionally masked backdoors or flaws in code. And what about compiled binaries? Not everyone compiles the client from source. They don't need every last person to run backdoored client, only majority must be compromised to compromise both network and everyone's trust in that network. A vocal minority is enough to influence the majority. Also, some people would do this on a regular basis anyway, not because they are paranoid, but that they are worried new code may break compatibility/have other issues, it's your money, after all! There is no general restriction on who can contribute to the code as well, and many dozens of random internet dudes have become developers, and actively follow the development process. |
|
|
|
I do not think it is that hard to "wash" BTC if you really wanted to.
What many people do is sell BTC for LTC, then later use LTC to buy back BTC.
There are other options as well.
It needs to be able to be resistant to government-grade analysis, big data and stuff like that. But I agree that zerocoin is not a good idea. Then we should make a "Zerocoin alt" just for mixing. Set up the service on Tor. Problem solved? I think there are other proposals which are better, after all, if you leave the Bitcoin blockchain, you lose the confidence that is brought by the decentralization and infrastructure of the network.(If I were to "launder" my BTCs, I would not use any alt-chain, other than possibly LTC) |
|
|
|
OP's main point that a 51% attack is doable by a determined attacker is correct. It may not make sense to do so economically, but the attacker may not be economically motivated.
Bitcoin is the world's most powerful distributed computing project by an order of magnitude or two, but hashpower still needs to rise several orders of magnitude for bitcoin to be comfortably 51% attack resistant.
That said, hard fork is the solution if it ever did happen. It'd be quite disruptive, but it wouldn't be fatal.
Actually, with checkpointing, you only need to take extra precaution whenever you deal with large amount of bitcoins, make sure to wait long enough(much more than 6 confirmations but no more than 200). |
|
|
|
I do not think it is that hard to "wash" BTC if you really wanted to.
What many people do is sell BTC for LTC, then later use LTC to buy back BTC.
There are other options as well.
It needs to be able to be resistant to government-grade analysis, big data and stuff like that. But I agree that zerocoin is not a good idea. |
|
|
|
I think we should be able to opt into being anon.
Some people use the block chain as a proof of assets such as AsicMiner. If you forced them to be anon we would have to trust them more.
I highly trust AsicMiner, but just used them as an example. The blackchain can be an awesome accounting system and some of use use it.
Your link to Zerocoin was very interesting and the first I had heard about it.
Glad you got your account back.
Ideally, we should have a multi-tier system, with options for complete paranoid and joe sixpack all available. The status quo is that most of the funding goes toward the joe sixpack end of the spectrum. |
|
|
|
And yes, do I need to bring up again that after 4 years no usable alternative Bitcoin software is in widespread use out there?
I use my own transaction signing scripts and offline wallets. Some people use blockchain.info wallets. I guess the main client works pretty well for most people, plus Armory for extras, or Electrum client, or android client  But still none of them can work without bitcoind as a backend? That's what I meant. |
|
|
|
Your money will not come back, to 51% attack the network, you will mine 100% of the blocks, everyone will know immediately, and they either defeat you or abandon the network, then your bitcoins will soon become worthless.
Pretty sure Gavin and the superfriends would say 'f#$% this' and the above scenario would happen. Isn't this pretty much what happened with the '2 chainz' blocksize crisis? Everyone has the power to disagree, and you can't beat a 51% attacker unless you have the resource, whatever your decision is. And yes, do I need to bring up again that after 4 years no usable alternative Bitcoin software is in widespread use out there? I don't think folks like Gavin like to do something like this, but imagine what will happen to them if they sit there and do nothing, if there is any oligarchy it's made by us, not them. |
|
|
|
|
You need to realize what distinguishes Bitcoin from nearly all religions is it professes a negative belief: instead of claiming the existence of some omnipotent entity, it relies on the assumption that some cryptographic algorithm are humanly infeasible to break.
|
|
|
|
Your money will not come back, to 51% attack the network, you will mine 100% of the blocks, everyone will know immediately, and they either defeat you or abandon the network, then your Bitcoins will soon become worthless.
If I claim to be the good guy who just noticed that his mining operation can be more profitable with 51%, I might lull people into believing that I'm just a business man. Maybe I sponsor the next bitcoin conference and grab a seat at the Bitcoin Foundation. No, long before you cross into the 51% domain, people will start noticing, when you are at 40%, you already would have more than 60% of chances to mine 6 blocks in a row, you have no excuse. And people will abandon the network not because they don't believe you ,but because it makes no sense economically to mine anymore, when you get all the blocks. And if you fancy being the sole miner in a network and still confident to be able to somehow lure people into use it, why not just fork? It's only one day's work after all. |
|
|
|
Your money will not come back, to 51% attack the network, you will mine 100% of the blocks, everyone will know immediately, and they either defeat you or abandon the network, then your bitcoins will soon become worthless. Also, you forgot the $100,000-200,000/day electricity cost, and heat dissipation, and land purchase....  |
|
|
|
Not sure if we should start pressure-testing CCP's tolerance with Bitcoin now. |
|
|
|
If they want to corner Litecoins too that would be great, and VaginaCoin and then the immense number of new coins that will be produced once people realize that the banksters will buy them all.  I think they still do not fully appreciate how disruptive this could really be. This ... BitCoin is not a single company, there is no "The Bitcoin Company" running the bitcoin servers, or even a single decentralised network. It is open source for creating monies ad infinitum, i.e. armageddon for anybody still harbouring illusions of monopoly power over monetary issuance. stop with the "they don't realize, they don't understand" bullshit. They do. We have a battle on our hands. I agree Doc. These bankers aren't morons. They know exactly what they are doing it's just that their motivations are counter to those of Bitcoiners. Having said that, if I were them I would be looking to add BTC to the IMF sooner rather than later at potentially much higher prices. Perhaps they already have some. Insider information about explicit Bitcoin monetization by the IMF (or any sovereign state) would be the trade of the century. We have seen many times in the past few years how key information routinely gets leaked out by officials and bureaucrats to privileged banking cronies. Remember, Bitcoin is the ultimate insider trading vehicle, as it's entirely unregulated in that regard. If you're a bankster with friends at the IMF and get some hint of impending action, nothing restrains you from telling all your friends and family after you've loaded up yourself. There is no SEC coming after any of you, especially if you take extra precautions and buy via OTC channels. So if someday you start seeing the price shooting up inexplicably, day after day, on no fundamental news or media coverage, remember this article. If there's easy billions to be made by pushing certain ideas to alumni from your company who now work as heads of central banks and treasury departments...don't be surprised to see the investment banking universe put their weight behind that kind of trade. You can't be serious. We will have some information because we'll see some significant improvements on the infrastructure. I don't believe tens of billions of dollars will flow into Gox to buy bitcoins, at least not in its current incarnation. |
|
|
|
|
I think OP's point is:"We the People" get to decide if someone's money should be traced, if we don't want to help out tracking down a certain person, the authorities should be powerless. Otoh, if we all decide to cooperate, whether the criminal uses Bitcoin or banknotes makes no difference, he can be traced.
|
|
|
|
So does that mean you guys will shut up once the beta ends and rippled is released as promised?
Probably. The question is: will it really happen ? The most popcorn worthy drama is how OpenCoin is going to inject the remaining 49 billion something XRPs into the market. |
|
|
|
|
No need to suspect OP, he can afford that, otherwise let's stay on topic, what's stopping Opencoin from implementing cold storage?
|
|
|
|
Freedom of religion was a right secured by the Constitution of Medina which founded the first Islamic state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina This was at least 1150 years prior to the revolutionary war in the british colonies. Just for the record. Christians, Jews, and people of other beliefs lived in Islamic countries, sometimes in peace, sometimes in conflict, to the present day. Muslims and Jews, on the other hand, were expelled from their homes in Italy and Spain, from the 12th to 15th centuries after Jesus (Peace and blessings be with him and with his mother). No doubt the Muslims in the Middle Ages were much more tolerant towards "heretics", then Western Christians, however, this kind of tolerance is still not the religious freedom in the modern sense, only "peoples of the Book" are protected, although in practice they have a funny way to randomly expand the scope of such people, like just assume another religion's saint is an Islamic prophet coming before Muhammad, in the end even Zoroastrians are considered "peoples of the Book". Also, I am sure that atheists are/were not tolerated. |
|
|
|
I tend to believe that people losing their faiths in religion not because of their misfortunes, but their fortune to be able to live in the modern era, and the availability of alternative explanations. Medieval people suffered a lot more than perhaps any of us, yet they are always feverishly religious, without finding out how much better life could possibly be, or having access to alternatives(they didn't know about Confucianism, and Greek/Latin literatures are off the limit for most people) , you will just choose to believe life is what it should be, because it's the same for everyone, or rather, your material well-being, and everything else is decided by you lineage, you have not seen an exception. Actually, the real revolution of thoughts only happened after the scholars(all of them clerics) started studying works of Antiquity, and learning things that none of them had conceived for the previous hundreds of years. Then slowly it started to transform every aspect of people's life, first the nobles, then the poors.
Also hundreds of years later we are perhaps much more confident with our own judgement, be it about morality or something else, seeing that people here pretty much question God because they are already assertive about certain things being right regardless of God, unimaginable for the Medieval folks.
The main difference between today and Medieval Times is that back then heresy was a crime punishable by torture and death. It is very possible that people back then were tempted to lose their faith even more so than today but were too afraid to speak their minds. If they didn't speak up, you would have no way of knowing about it today would you? One of the great gifts given to us (in America) by our founding fathers was the freedom of religion and freedom from religious persecution. Now we are free to use our own minds to question our faith and discuss it in, hopefully, rational conversations with others, and through the use of the Internet, all over the world. Funny you brought up the torture and death, so I figure something should be said about the medieval justice system. For hundreds of years, trial by fire was the prevailing method of determining who is guilty, it stayed in use because, guess what, it somehow worked. People on trial really believed in things like divine intervention, and usually confessed immediately after such a decision was made by the judge. Now back to the question of whether there were people who are atheistic but were too afraid to speak up, it maybe true there are people who did not speak up due to the fear of torture and death, but I think it's also important to understand why people gradually started to speak up after a certain time point, the fact that theologists like Aquinas would feel the need to reconciliate Christian belief with Greek philosophy and logic, is quite telling. About the freedom of/from religion, it's true that the American founding fathers were the first with the important foresight to establish it formally as one of the basic principle of the government, probably due to their ancestors' experience of being persecuted religiously, yet it still should be pointed out U.S was not the first nation to treat all religions equally before the law. |
|
|
|
You guys are missing the point... This means COIN TAINT. It is not "self regulation" it is a central Bitcoin Taint Organization that tracks which coins were used for illegal activities and puts them on a centrally-controlled taint list. Most large Bitcoin companies will participate. Say Dude A sells some pot on Silk Road. He receives the BTC and sends them to a mixer and then to Dude B via IRC-OTC after selling them for a wire transfer or something. Dude B sends them to somebody else. Eventually they wind up at Bitcoin100 Charity where they are sent to "Starving Kids in Moojoombo Village, Congo Fund." Representative of SKiMVC charity visits the kids and says " www.bitcoin100.org Bitcoin100 just donated $1,000 to us, so we have enough money to install a village well and you won't have to walk 5 miles a day for water anymore!" Yayy! Everyone cheering, people dancing! Next day, representative visits again, this time with sad look on her face. "Sorry, Bitpay wouldn't pay us for the Bitcoins, they just returned them, saying the Bitcoin Taint Council tainted them. We looked into the possibility of selling them on the black market OTC to people who didn't mind the taint, for lower than spot value, but our attorney advised against it saying we could be subject to massive fines or loss of our NPO status. Sorry, no well." Why were they tainted? By the time they had been sent to the charity, the council's blockchain explorer had tracked them and discovered they were (1) Used for Pot sale, which is illegal in some countries. (2) Sent through a mixer, all coins sent through mixers will be tainted. (3) Sold on IRC-OTC which violates AML/FINCEN regulations. I can think of a thousand scenarios where we could be screwed, including for "crimes" which are not really crimes. The War on Drugs will be extended to Bitcoins. Just like paypal, anyone who does not align with the subjective morality of the Taint Council will have their "account" frozen via blacklist. ALL miners will have their coins tainted unless they are registered as a FINCEN "money transmitter" and pay taxes. There will be a whitelist for mined coins. This isn't tinfoil hat worst-case scenario bullshit. This is what is actually being proposed by people high up in the Bitcoin World. Peter Vessenes warns that there will be no grandfathering of coins. So if any of your coins were used by PirateAt40 or a silk road pot-selling teenager in the past, they will be unspendable for 99% of merchants/receivers. This could be 1% of your stash or it could be 59%. Oh, who wants to make a bet? The Supreme Coin Taint Council will have a buyback option where you sell your tainted coins to them for 50% of spot. Then, they untaint the coins and release them back in to circulation. This is just what Paypal does. This is just what government regulatory agencies do. Most U.S. dollars have cocaine residue on them but I can still spend them just fine. Now we're trying to make BTC worse than the USD? Worrying about whether coins are tainted every time I receive them? What do you think this will do to the price of BTC if they can be randomly tainted with no prior notice? Beware of any "self regulation" talk because I can guarantee you they are talking about COIN TAINT. And if large businesses/organizations in the Bitcoin world start operating from a centrally controlled Taint List, I will sell all of my coins into other cryptocurrencies as well as precious metals - you should too, because that would be the end of bitcoin. Such measures could do exactly nothing to stop illicit traders using Bitcoin, with just current technology they could find ways to easily circumvent the system, even if all major exchanges refuse to accept coins which are not "positively tainted". |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
